


you can be happy

by Chiropter



Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: Canon Trans Character, Drabble Sequence, Gen, Homophobic Language, Implied onesided (?) KiruGon, passing references to transphobia and catcalling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-13
Updated: 2014-08-13
Packaged: 2018-02-13 00:24:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2130099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chiropter/pseuds/Chiropter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Killua may know the rules about Alluka's power by heart, but he still has a lot to learn about travelling with her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you can be happy

**1.**

 Alluka is _loud_. She must have never had much chance to show it before, trapped in her crèche of a prison, but as soon as they're on the road, it's like a dam has broken to the sea. Months and years of thoughts and queries come pouring out of her, and it takes all Killua has to simply stay afloat.

"Brother, why does the sun set and rise in the same place every day?" is today's first question, soft-spoken for her but still startling away a rabbit across the field. Killua's still groggy from a night spent dreaming of hospital waiting rooms, and his answer is flat, punctuated by a long yawn.

"Uh... the world goes round it, in a big circle. Well, that's what Father said, anyway." He bites back a _didn't you know that?_ \- Alluka isn't Gon, and their father never spared the time to teach her about the stars. Determination wells within him. He gets up and sets about heating their breakfast, while his sister's eyes glitter with awe at the dawn-tinted sky.

 

**2.**

Nanika is younger than Alluka. Perhaps not by much (her speech patterns make it hard to tell), but she certainly acts more like a child, and it's her safety Killua finds himself looking out for most as they explore the country's biggest city. Where Alluka knows better than to talk to strangers, Nanika does not. Where Alluka can stay awake just as long as Killua, Nanika falls asleep or switches out seemingly at random, no matter where they are.

She cries more easily, too. Alluka reports one lunchtime that she's sulking because her companions get to eat ice cream without her, and lets her come out to try some herself. It becomes apparent very quickly that she just liked the colours. It's a whole day before she'll speak to Killua again, and when she does she holds her tongue the entire conversation, as if the cold still lingers.

(It can make things oddly domestic sometimes, he and Alluka, together looking after their youngest sibling. He has yet to call Nanika his sister aloud, but day by day he's coming to accept her for what she is. Family.)

(If only their parents felt the same.)

 

**3.**

Gon's not here. The world keeps spinning.

It comes to Killua in feelings, mostly, an awareness of his wallet and moments in the dark where the weight of the world seems too heavy to bear. Some nights, he thinks of Gon, but more frequently than ever his mind is on his family; their eyes in torchlight, their harsh voices in that basement chamber. Some nights, he can bear it. Others, it tires him too much to sleep.

For Alluka, the change is more obvious. She wakes him one morning with tears in her eyes.

"Brother, I..."

There’s no need to say another word. He picks her up in his arms, cradling her light frame like a doll. They change her sheets together, and she clutches her skirt in trembling fists as they spin round in the machine.

The world keeps spinning. Alluka's hit puberty. His best friend is gone and his sister stained the bedsheets.

The world keeps spinning.

 

**4.**

Nanika's scared of cats.

"Illu-miii," she wails, grabbing onto Killua's sleeve with one hand and pointing with the other. The cat doesn't move, and Killua curses Kite for being right- good hunters get on with animals. This cat must have decided he's worthy.

"Look," he says gently, trying to pry Nanika away from his arm so he can face her, "that's not Illumi. He has _much_ weirder eyes than that, right?" He lifts his hands as he says it, holding them out and wiggling his tongue as he widens his eyes in his best imitation. Nanika gives a hesitant giggle, and Killua prays to whatever gods are out there that his elder brother _never_ finds out about this.

It seems she likes rabbits, though. Mice, too. He caught her last week, crouched under bathroom sink in their latest motel stop. She rarely went in bathrooms, upset by the otherness of the face in the mirror, and he’d almost yelled to see her under there with all that dust and mould- but her hand, half-covered by shadows and grime, didn’t waver.

“What are you-” he’d started, but she’d turned to him with a glare.

 _“Shh!_ ”

It surprised him that she was so intent on the creature he now saw jump in the gloom a few inches from her hand, at least until she finally managed to get it on her palm and pull it into the light. Tiny, with sleek black fur that rippled as it quivered. Her face, as it sniffed her fingers, was somehow bright despite the dark hollows of her features.

It had let her hold it for a whole ten minutes, and she hadn’t once looked away from its round black eyes.

 

**5.**

What’s new to his sisters is often routine for him. Their little sheltered room had had no room for fairy lights or soap dispensers, and his voice is weary as he explains for the third time that, yes, three meals a day is standard.

( _Sheltered_ , says a voice at the back of his head, _sheltered? Sheltered children know they’re allowed to eat lunch._ He pushes the voice away. He’ll be angry when he’s alone, or when he’s facing his father, but not here. Not in front of them.)

Sights, sounds and tastes excite them. Alluka hasn’t heard a dog bark since she was a child, and the first time a car goes past them she jumps, frightened senseless for a moment before dissolving into giggles. Nanika is more timid, but the wonder on her face as Killua shows her a passing blimp is enough that it makes him look twice, too. For a second, there’s a flash of green in his vision, a bubble of earthy laughter. He blinks. It’s gone.

The blimp drifts away from them slowly, and it takes less than five minutes for Nanika to find something else to marvel at.

Seeing things fresh isn’t so bad.

 

**6.**

Alluka _understands._

Killua remembers one night with Gon in particular. Early morning on Greed Island, and the stars had still been bright. A restless breeze stirred the dust, blew hair into his open eyes.

Gon’s snoring was a comfort, but it couldn’t distract Killua’s brain from its whirring. Every time he closed his eyes, it got louder- a low, incessant hum, forming purple spirals beneath his eyelids. His eyes stung from trying not to blink, and the bruises beneath them folded and creased, as if that awful purple leaked through his very skin.

Gon had nothing to do with it, really, and the next day had been full and fun as any other they spent together. Yet sometimes, even as Alluka’s arms squeeze out his nightmares, he still sees that smear of white in his head- the rise and fall of another human’s back, close enough to touch but impossibly far away.

 

**7.**

The world’s smaller with someone vulnerable by your side.

There are places Killua can’t- _won’t_ go, times of day he won’t leave Alluka’s side and things he won’t say aloud. It’s not even just the bigger things. He can’t race Alluka to the tops of mountains, but nor can he leave her in public bathrooms, or let her walk too far ahead at night.

At least she’s not fazed by it. She flounces happily into the female changing rooms when they stop to buy new clothes, and on more than one occasion she’s beamed right back at strangers leering in the street. Honestly, it’s admirable. Killua’s ears still ring with a single cry of ‘ _fag_ ’, slurred at him last month across a bar.

In some ways, though, the sudden fences round his world only seem to give it new layers. Mountain flowers he might have run right through are now only the tops of a forest, and the grass and dirt beneath crawls with glittering beetles, runs in rivers of silt. Alluka thinks butterflies are funny, and she’s sort of right, now he looks. The way their wings flap desperately against the bend in their abdomens. The way they somehow, still, manage to fly.

 

**8.**

There’s so much left to do.

There are whole towns, cities he’s never even _heard_ of, rivers to swim in that have never been named. It’s been a while since he just _sat_ for a moment, but with Alluka, he _can_. She’ll ask him something. He’ll answer, and she’ll laugh delightedly, content to observe whatever’s caught her interest until she understands it. He stays on his guard- Illumi knows tricks that could snatch her away without the slightest warning- but _she_ doesn’t have to. She trusts him to lead her, even as she grabs his hand to show him something new.

New things aren’t all. Sometimes he’s stumped, because Alluka wants to see places he’s already been, and, with Gon, he only ever moved forward. There are places he’d rather not revisit, too. He tells her he’s not ready yet, that those parts of the world are too out of the way, but he knows he can’t put it off forever. She wants to see where he fought, where he won and where he lost. She wants to see the beginning and she wants to see the end. Every chapter of his life she’s missed.

The sun’s going down. They stand side by side, hands twined tightly together, and it’s so different to how it was a few months ago; standing by another’s side to watch the same sun, wishing for another’s hand in his.

If the sun can look so different, then why not a tower? Why not an island, or a palace?

Follow the sunset. Keep going ‘til you come back round.

_Don’t wait for me, Gon._

_I think I’ll be a while._


End file.
